Question about streaming on Ruby

R

Rob

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

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charset="iso-2022-jp"
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I have a problem which I even don't know where to start.
My professor asked me to build a system in Ruby which uses streaming in
order to play voice.
It is a system where the server will give responses to what the user says.
So, basically if the user says "hello", the system will reply saying "Fine,
and you?".
At the moment I don't have to care about the voice recognition, I just have
to
build something that can save a sound file in the server and something where
the user can
press a button called "record my voice" and that as soon as the server
finishes recording the
user's voice, the server will play the response file.

My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?
Can Ruby do this?

I asked my friends at my lab, and one friend said I should better forget
Ruby and use active-X.
But my professor said I should try to develop it using Ruby.

Rob

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<BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>I have a problem which I even =
don't know=20
where to start.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>My professor asked me to build =
a system in=20
Ruby which uses streaming in order to play voice.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>It is a system where the =
server will give=20
responses to what the user says.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>So, basically if the user says =
"hello",=20
the system will reply saying "Fine, and you?".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>At the moment I don't have to =
care about=20
the voice recognition, I just have to</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>build something that can save =
a sound file=20
in the server and something where the user can</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>press a button called "record =
my voice"=20
and that as soon as the server finishes recording the</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>user's voice, the server will =
play the=20
response file.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>My question is: how to start =
doing this=20
with Ruby?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>Can Ruby do this?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>I asked my friends at my lab, =
and one=20
friend said I should better forget Ruby and use active-X.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>But my professor said I should =
try to=20
develop it using Ruby.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=3D"MS UI Gothic" size=3D2>Rob</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>

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L

Laurent Sansonetti

Hello Rob,

Rob wrote:
My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?
Can Ruby do this?
Click to expand...

Yes! In fact, GStreamer is probably able to do this, and you can call
GStreamer via Ruby using Ruby-GStreamer.

I never tried this, but I think you could record audio from the
microphone using the osssrc element from the ossaudio plugin.

You will find more information about GStreamer on its homepage:

http://www.gstreamer.net

And for Ruby bindings:

http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/ruby-gst

Current API (CVS):

http://lrz.samika.net/ruby-gst/api/index.html

Ruby-GStreamer 0.1.1 will be released in a few days, featuring a lot of
improvements.

Cheers,
 
R

Robert Klemme

Rob said:
I have a problem which I even don't know where to start.
My professor asked me to build a system in Ruby which uses streaming in
order to play voice.
It is a system where the server will give responses to what the user says.
So, basically if the user says "hello", the system will reply saying "Fine,
and you?".
At the moment I don't have to care about the voice recognition, I just have
to
build something that can save a sound file in the server and something where
the user can
press a button called "record my voice" and that as soon as the server
finishes recording the
user's voice, the server will play the response file.

My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?
Can Ruby do this?

I asked my friends at my lab, and one friend said I should better forget
Ruby and use active-X.
But my professor said I should try to develop it using Ruby.
Click to expand...

Apart from the sound recognition stuff this sounds like an ordinary web
application. You can have a look at eruby and I think there's an Apache
mod_ruby.

The difficult part - independent of programming language used - will be
the sound recording of the user's voice.

robert
 
B

Brian Candler

press a button called "record my voice" and that as soon as the server
finishes recording the

user's voice, the server will play the response file.



My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?

Can Ruby do this?
Click to expand...

Sure, at worst something like:

system("wavrec -r 5 myfile.wav")

Or I guess you could even open /dev/audio or /dev/dsp and read/write from
them directly.

Cheers,

Brian.
 
B

Bill Kelly

Hi,

Rob said:
At the moment I don't have to care about the voice recognition, I just have to
build something that can save a sound file in the server and something where
the user can press a button called "record my voice" and that as soon as the
server finishes recording the user's voice, the server will play the response file.

My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?
Can Ruby do this?

I asked my friends at my lab, and one friend said I should better forget
Ruby and use active-X.
But my professor said I should try to develop it using Ruby.
Click to expand...

Since you mention active-X I'm assuming you might be under Windows.

Here's a way to Play sounds in Ruby under Windows:
http://www.ruby-talk.com/55423

As for recording... I haven't recorded under Windows, but there's a high-level
API available for recording, that we should be able to call from Ruby.

This page has examples using Windows' winmm.dll MCISendString function to
both play and record sounds. The examples are in VB, but translate easily
to Ruby using Ruby's Win32API module.
http://www.geocities.com/smigman.geo/mci/wav.html
(Hmm.. the page seems to be down at the moment... but it's still in Google's
cache. If you search for "MCISendString record" [without the quotes] in
Google, this site should come up as one of the first hits, called "Visual
Basic WAV"... then click on the 'Cached' link :)

Here's a Ruby example using MCISendString to play a sound:

require 'Win32API'
MCISendString = Win32API.new("winmm", "mciSendString", ['P', 'P', 'L', 'L'], 'L')

MCISendString.call('open m:\download\snd\columbus.wav type waveaudio alias voice1', nil, 0, 0)
MCISendString.call('play voice1', nil, 0, 0)

...I've tried the above on my system and it worked.

I haven't tried the following, but the command lines are translated from
the above web page:

# prepare to record in buffer called "capture"
MCISendString("open new type waveaudio alias capture", nil, 0, 0)

# set bits-per-sample to 8 or 16
MCISendString("set capture bitspersample 8", nil, 0, 0)

# set sample rate (11025, 22050, or 44100)
MCISendString("set capture samplespersec 11025", nil, 0, 0)

# set mono or stereo (1 or 2 channels)
MCISendString("set capture channels 1", nil, 0, 0)

# apparently this will record until the user presses "stop"
MCISendString("record capture", nil, 0, 0)

# alternately it seems you can specify a range in the buffer
# in which to record:
MCISendString("record capture from 2000 to 4000", nil, 0, 0)
# ...so presumably this would allow you to record for a few
# seconds and stop automatically without the user having to
# click anything.

# finally to save the buffer to a file:
MCISendString("save capture c:\NewWave.wav", nil, 0, 0)



.....Hmmm.... In your case, if you really need to do streaming,
a lower-level API would probably be needed. Are you saying you'd
need to record a sound (what the user speaks) locally, stream that
to the server, have the server do (eventual) voice recognition, and
respond with an audio stream back to the user?

Since the phrases spoken are probably short, I wonder if you might
be able to just use a non-streamed API like MCISendString? And then
just transmit the recorded audio file to the server?

If you really need streaming, you might want to look into this
lower-level WAV API:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/multimed/mmfunc_1q5q.asp

Here's some info on caling waveInOpen() from VB, which should
be easy to translate to Ruby's Win32API like the MCISendString
stuff above..
http://www.mentalis.org/apilist/waveInOpen.shtml



Hope this helps,

Bill
 
R

Rob

Hi, Bill.

Thanks a lot for the hints.
I am under Windows, but the problem is that my professor wants this
application to be compatible
with any kinds of servers (windows and linux).
I was thinking that this application is similar to Yahoo voice chat, since
it deals with streaming.
But Yahoo voice chat also needs Windows to run.
Is that possible to make an application for this which runs in both windows,
mac and linux and
can be accessed from a browser like microsoft internet explorer, mozilla or
netscape?

Rob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Kelly" <[email protected]>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 11:01 PM
Subject: Re: Question about streaming on Ruby

Hi,

Rob said:
At the moment I don't have to care about the voice recognition, I just have to
build something that can save a sound file in the server and something where
the user can press a button called "record my voice" and that as soon as the
server finishes recording the user's voice, the server will play the response file.

My question is: how to start doing this with Ruby?
Can Ruby do this?

I asked my friends at my lab, and one friend said I should better forget
Ruby and use active-X.
But my professor said I should try to develop it using Ruby.
Click to expand...

Since you mention active-X I'm assuming you might be under Windows.

Here's a way to Play sounds in Ruby under Windows:
http://www.ruby-talk.com/55423

As for recording... I haven't recorded under Windows, but there's a high-level
API available for recording, that we should be able to call from Ruby.

This page has examples using Windows' winmm.dll MCISendString function to
both play and record sounds. The examples are in VB, but translate easily
to Ruby using Ruby's Win32API module.
http://www.geocities.com/smigman.geo/mci/wav.html
(Hmm.. the page seems to be down at the moment... but it's still in Google's
cache. If you search for "MCISendString record" [without the quotes] in
Google, this site should come up as one of the first hits, called "Visual
Basic WAV"... then click on the 'Cached' link :)

Here's a Ruby example using MCISendString to play a sound:

require 'Win32API'
MCISendString = Win32API.new("winmm", "mciSendString", ['P', 'P', 'L', 'L'], 'L')

MCISendString.call('open m:\download\snd\columbus.wav type waveaudio alias voice1', nil, 0, 0)
MCISendString.call('play voice1', nil, 0, 0)

...I've tried the above on my system and it worked.

I haven't tried the following, but the command lines are translated from
the above web page:

# prepare to record in buffer called "capture"
MCISendString("open new type waveaudio alias capture", nil, 0, 0)

# set bits-per-sample to 8 or 16
MCISendString("set capture bitspersample 8", nil, 0, 0)

# set sample rate (11025, 22050, or 44100)
MCISendString("set capture samplespersec 11025", nil, 0, 0)

# set mono or stereo (1 or 2 channels)
MCISendString("set capture channels 1", nil, 0, 0)

# apparently this will record until the user presses "stop"
MCISendString("record capture", nil, 0, 0)

# alternately it seems you can specify a range in the buffer
# in which to record:
MCISendString("record capture from 2000 to 4000", nil, 0, 0)
# ...so presumably this would allow you to record for a few
# seconds and stop automatically without the user having to
# click anything.

# finally to save the buffer to a file:
MCISendString("save capture c:\NewWave.wav", nil, 0, 0)



.....Hmmm.... In your case, if you really need to do streaming,
a lower-level API would probably be needed. Are you saying you'd
need to record a sound (what the user speaks) locally, stream that
to the server, have the server do (eventual) voice recognition, and
respond with an audio stream back to the user?

Since the phrases spoken are probably short, I wonder if you might
be able to just use a non-streamed API like MCISendString? And then
just transmit the recorded audio file to the server?

If you really need streaming, you might want to look into this
lower-level WAV API:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/multimed/mmfunc_1q5q.asp

Here's some info on caling waveInOpen() from VB, which should
be easy to translate to Ruby's Win32API like the MCISendString
stuff above..
http://www.mentalis.org/apilist/waveInOpen.shtml



Hope this helps,

Bill
Click to expand...
 

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